Could This 'PLL' Theory Explain Charlotte's Past?

No one's family is quite as they seem on Pretty Little Liars — especially the DiLaurentis clan. If you thought that things got little complicated after it was revealed that Charlotte — aka Cece Drake — was Alison and Jason's secret sister, then things definitely did once we learned that Jessica's identical twin Mary was Charlotte's biological mom. Fans have spent an entire season attempting to unpack Charlotte's family, and though it may have been revealed that Mary's second child was none other than Spencer, we still are missing one key branch of Charlotte's family tree: who is Charlotte's dad? Though the answer won't be revealed until Pretty Little Liars returns for Season 7B in April of 2017, there's reason to suspect that Pastor Ted could be Charlotte's biological father — and potentially very untrustworthy.

According to showrunner I. Marlene King on Zap2It, we will find out who Charlotte's father is in Season 7B, as well as learn how Spencer — also Mary's daughter — came to be in her own family dynamic. One thing that I can't imagine Pretty Little Liars doing is making the reveal of who Charlotte's (and potentially Spencer's) father is a total rando — after all, if it was someone that we never met or heard of before, why keep his identity such a secret? It really only makes sense for Charlotte's dad to be someone we've already met, and someone we could theoretically meet again. According to TVLine, Pastor Ted is returning for Season 7B of Pretty Little Liars , so could he be Charlotte's real dad? His mere presence in Season 7 isn't the only clue.

Though we don't know too much about Mary's past, she did tell Spencer a particularly heartbreaking story about how she was sent to Radley. Mary told Spencer that Jessica essentially tricked Mary into taking over for her babysitting charge, a young boy named Teddy. However, when the parents came home that night, they discovered that baby Teddy had died — and Mary was sent to Radley in lieu of prison for neglecting the child. If we believe Mary's story, it's a pretty sad one — but we have no idea whether Mary is telling the truth. If she's lying about the reason she was committed to Radley, perhaps her story could give a clue to something else: like the name of the father of her child.

Let's say that Mary was lying about at least part of the story. Perhaps she grabbed the first name she could think of in order to sell the story about the child's death. Teddy was the first name that came to mind, simply because that was the name of a very important person in her life — Ted, the father of her child. Perhaps long before Ted started romancing Hanna's mom Ashley, he had an affair with Mary that led to the birth of Charlotte — and later returned to Rosewood to spy on the people connected to his daughter. Shadier things have certainly happened on PLL, and Ted being intertwined with this whole conspiracy would certainly give this character a reason to hang around in Season 7B.

Could Ted be way more integral to the PLL backstory than we thought? We'll have to wait until April of 2017 to start to learn the truth about Charlotte's parentage, but there's certainly a reason to be suspicious of Ted.

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